Japan's NYK Line will have full electronic data interchange (EDI) capability in the second half of 1996, a company spokesman says.
He said the carrier, which had linked its office computers in Asia with a system called AsiaLink, had made this move to centralise its corporate data.
Mr S. Hitomi, assistant general manager of the business process management division of NYK Line, said: 'We're now the best positioned shipping line in Asia because we have centralised control over the corporate data, but can process data at each Asian office using individual AS/400 systems.
'We're leveraging out IT investment across Asia with our regional office network to offer a seamless customer service capability.' The AsiaLink system allows NYK to track the location of any shipment or container in real time and answer queries with the latest information.
It is also designed to build a link between the carrier's frontline business operations such as booking, container tracking, container inventory control, documentation and trans-shipment.